1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to Internet security systems, and more particularly to establishing an Internet security system that allows for accrual of credits for human verification applications.
2. Description of the Related Art
A CAPTCHA system is a means of generating new challenges which current computers are unable to accurately solve but most humans can solve. The term CAPTCHA stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”.
FIGS. 1-3 illustrate related CAPTCHA applications. FIG. 1 illustrates CAPTCHA application 100 employing a distortion of text image. FIG. 2 illustrates CAPTCHA application 200 employing an angled line. FIG. 3 illustrates CAPTCHA application 300 using a crowded symbol.
Aside from text CAPTCHAs shown above, even audio and video CAPTCHAs are popular. For example, Google supports audio CAPTCHA in Gmail signup service.
Many internet websites use CAPTCHA to avoid automated use of their internet services. For example, Yahoo.com uses CAPTCHA for creating a new email account and Craigslist uses CAPTCHA when placing advertisements. File sharing sites like RapidShare.com and MegaUpload.com use CAPTCHA to avoid “bots” and/or automated agents from heavily accessing and hence overburdening websites. Thus, CAPTCHA systems are intended to hinder automatic and otherwise computer driven use of websites and other applications, but to allow humans to access the desired content.
The Problem with CAPTCHA technology is that it is too restrictive. Genuine human users are not able to perform efficiently common functions such as queuing downloads or uploads since CAPTCHA requires explicit user intervention exactly at the time that a new download or upload has to begin. Thus, a user has to be present at the start of each download. Or the user possibly has to verify his humanity at various steps across many different applications in one sitting.
Thus, a need exists to improve the ease and efficiency of human users to access multiple CAPTCHA authorizations. In addition, there also exists a need to provide a community of CAPTCHA users to provide a marketplace for CAPTCHA authorization across the community of CAPTCHA users to provide real-time CAPTCHA authorizations.